Count Nikolai, the Danish prince charming Australia
The model, business student and nephew to our own Danish Crown Princess Mary is bringing some royal star power to Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival.
He may no longer bear the official title “Prince” thanks to the streamlining of Danish royal arrangements, but Count Nikolai of Monpezat is Prince Charming. Years of etiquette training, preparation and a caring family have created what could be the closest thing we have to a royal only Disney could replicate.
If you hadn’t seen Nikolai dominating the runways for Burberry and Dior since 2018, or posing up a storm in Hermès and Orlebar Brown while managing to mesmerise a friendly golden retriever for these pages, you’d be forgiven for thinking he was just a high-fashion AI creation. However, when we meet for a quick lunch – between this shoot and a tutorial at the University of Technology Sydney – at brunch institution bills, his intelligence and warmth outshine even his striking looks.
Nikolai is tall and has the type of complexion that puts olives to shame. His piercing green eyes glisten with a hint of impishness, he’s quick to laugh and his bone structure is as sharp as his wit. The mop of dark floppy curls recalls Harry Styles, but he admits he prefers the way “Aussie guys” express themselves with their hair.
“I love the mullet and the moustache thing,” he says. “They are really cool and I love how expressive young guys are here. Their style is just so relaxed and nonchalant. I love how they walk around barefoot sometimes – not that I ever would – or just in their thongs.
“Growing up, I had a very conservative clothing style. I probably still do. I’ve really gotten into wearing blazers or coats, but with chic hoodies underneath. The combination of my upbringing, what I like now and Australian street culture is something I’m really keen to explore more in terms of my fashion.”
Could we see the Count of Monpezat sporting a mullet? “Oh I couldn’t pull it off,” he’s quick to reply, as he removes the Acne denim jacket he’s teamed with Nike Panda Dunks and settles in with a turmeric and fruit juice (hold the orange, “I’m really allergic!” he exclaims) and orders the famous corn fritters.
Not that the Count would be admonished by any royal courtiers for cutting his hair. Nowadays he takes his cues from his modelling agents around the world, including here in Australia. None of them would be too pleased if one of the world’s most in-demand male models decided to go all “business in the front, party in the back” during his semester abroad, where he is studying finance and business.
So how has a former Danish prince slipped so easily into Sydney? Much as his uncle did 23 years ago, just a few weeks after Nikolai’s first birthday. It was a trip that changed the course of the Danish royal family forever. Back then, an equally charming and handsome royal known as Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark slipped into a packed watering hole, the Slip Inn, in Sydney’s CBD. “Fred” had come to Australia to cheer on the Danes in the 2000 Olympics and he left with something more precious than a gold medal: love.
The rest is a fairytale worthy of Hans Christian Andersen and Australia now has an enduring connection with Denmark – thanks to the Tasmanian formerly known as Mary Donaldson.
“I have an aunt who’s an Aussie,” Nikolai says casually. Crown Princess Mary has loaded his iPhone with the numbers of her close friends “in case of emergency”. She also told him to wear SPF 50 and to enjoy Sydney’s Northern Beaches as much as he can. “She gave me a checklist of things to do when I go travelling around,” he says. “I’ve just been to the Whitsundays, Byron Bay, Brisbane, and I’m hoping to get to Uluru at the end of the year too. She reminded me to check my boots for snakes and check the bathroom for bugs.
“My dad lived here in the 1980s too, but that was in Wagga [Wagga Wagga in regional NSW] and he worked on a farm, so his experience is really different from mine.”
Nikolai says he is blessed to be in a position where he can chart his own course, but maintains he’ll be there for his closest cousin, Prince Christian, who turned 18 last month amid a flurry of pomp and ceremony. While Nikolai will retreat from official life, it’s just getting started for the future King.
The “introduction phase” for Christian – the eldest of Frederik and Mary’s four children – included having his first official stamp released and culminated in a white tie gala hosted by the Queen at Christiansborg Palace. To mark the milestone, the royal family shared previously unseen private photos taken by Frederik and Mary over the years, including from their private holidays visiting family and friends in Australia.
Nikolai was not present at the lavish banquet in Copenhagen, but his family was. Instead, he shared a photo of the two boys playing together 13 years ago. “Funny how time flies. Happy 18th Christian. I hope everyone celebrates you just as you deserve,” he wrote.
For Christian, his job as second in line to the throne starts now. He presented his first public speech in front of royals from across Europe, as well as 2000 young people from around Denmark and its territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. “I must find my path, even if it leads somewhere known,” he said as he thanked his mother Mary, who beamed brighter than her tiara and shed happy tears.
The Danish royal family has a significantly lower profile than the British monarchy, outside European aristocratic circles, but it is a deeply loved, revered and respected institution. Polls consistently show that more than 80 per cent of those surveyed over the past decade agreed that Denmark benefits from its monarchy.
Nikolai is the eldest grandchild of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. The 83-year-old is the world’s only current reigning queen and has ruled over one of the oldest monarchies on the continent for more than 50 years. Much like her late friend Queen Elizabeth II, she is extremely popular with her subjects, thanks to her accessibility, her dedication to “her job” and her steadfast commitment to the continuity of the monarchy.
Queen Margrethe – whose nickname is Daisy – read prehistoric archaeology at Cambridge and to mark her Golden Jubilee she rode a rollercoaster. She is also an accomplished artist, something she began after reading The Lord of the Rings as a child. In the 1970s she started sending its author her sketches as fan mail. She dedicates much of her spare time to serving as a set designer and creating costumes for national ballet productions and has been involved with more than 18 projects over the past 30 years.
And Queen Margrethe, whom Nikolai calls farmor, meaning “father’s mother”, is now also a streaming queen. While the Windsors have been coy about Netflix’s hit show The Crown, she has helped produce a new series for the platform. Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction is a fantasy dramedy backed by Netflix for which the Queen served as costume and production designer. She created almost 100 decoupages and outfits for the reimagining of Karin Blixen’s fairytale. “Honestly, she can’t stop,” Annelise Wern, one of her ladies-in-waiting, told The New York Times.
In January, the Queen announced plans to “streamline” the business arm of the royal family. It was, she explained, a bid to modernise the institution, bringing it more into line with other royal family models such as in Sweden, where the “spares” are given the freedom to forge their own lives and careers without being constrained by official duty and enjoying lifestyles that are maintained by their people.
While the British have talked about slimming down the monarchy, even before the fracturing caused by #megxit, the Danes actually did it. Queen Margrethe “discontinued” the royal titles of the children of her second son Joachim, which meant Nikolai, 24, Felix, 21, Henrik, 14, and Athena, 11 would no longer be princes or princesses.
So Nikolai is no longer Prince Nikolai of Denmark. Instead, Queen Margrethe bestowed on him the new title of Count Nikolai of Monpezat, in homage to his grandfather. The late Prince Henrik was born Henri de Laborde de Monpezat into an established family who lived in the province of Bearn near the Pyrenees. The region is about three hours from Château Cayx, the official holiday residence of the Danish royal family, to which the Queen often decamps to focus on her art and needlework.
There is an old Danish saying, slug en kamel, meaning “to swallow a camel”. It’s about how you learn to live with decisions out of your control and to compromise. I repeat it to Nikolai and he responds with joy – not because of the sentiment but at the fact that someone in Sydney speaks his native tongue.
He may have lost his princely title, but reflecting almost a year later, he says he has gained freedom from the shackles of what would have been a life of preordained duty. He now has a future he can mould for himself, and importantly for this Gen Z pin-up, his own Instagram account – made all the sweeter by the opportunity to live, hassle free, in sunny Sydney. He has quickly amassed more than 80,000 followers in less than a year and is now chronicling his modelling and time in Australia. One of his first public photographs showed him strolling down a leafy street in Darlinghurst, latte in hand, with the caption “Settling in” along with the shaka emoji. It’s a fitting piece of code for a guy who has seamlessly assumed a friendly, laid-back vibe for his emancipation era.
It seems that growing up in front of the cameras has prepared Nikolai well for his future. “When I turned 18, an agency contacted my mother and father and asked if I would be interested in modelling as a career path,” he says. “They waited until I could make my own decisions about that and I was keen to give it a go. I mean, who wouldn’t want to try it?
“As a boy, fashion was not always a part of my life. But once I reached a certain age, I think in high school, it became a bigger interest for me.”
Having a worldly mother in Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg, helped feed his appetite for a life outside the walls of Amalienborg Palace. An accomplished professional, Alexandra had moved from Hong Kong to Denmark after meeting Joachim. They were married for 10 years before divorcing in 2005. She won the hearts of her countrymen and women by presenting a speech in perfect Danish mere months after relocating and she now calls Denmark her permanent home.
Nikolai laughs and says that despite his family all being fluent in Danish, English, Cantonese and French, they often speak in “Danglish”. “It’s just easier that way as we’re now spread out all around the world.”
Nikolai’s father now lives in Washington with his second wife Marie and the three younger children. Joachim is set to assume a special ambassadorial role for Denmark to the US – something he did previously in Paris, where Nikolai has also studied.
Much like his uncle Frederik, Nikolai’s heart led him down under. His long-term girlfriend, Benedikte Thoustrup, wanted to relocate to continue her studies, also in business. The pair are high school sweethearts. “I think I want to work more in fashion and continue modelling for as long as possible, whereas Benedikte has more of that entrepreneurial streak,” he says.
Thoustrup is continuing to run her family’s online sustainable hair accessory and handbag business, BénéSoie, from the couple’s Sydney abode. She will be by Nikolai’s side in Melbourne for his next major assignment, as ambassador for this year’s Spring Racing Carnival. He will attend Derby Day as a guest of the Victoria Racing Club and also judge Fashions on the Fields. “My girlfriend has been riding all her life and I was introduced to the sport in Singapore,” he says. “I love it. The Melbourne Cup was on my Aussie bucket list.”
The fashionable young man has a lot in common with his farmor, as style appears to come naturally to him. For her 80th birthday back in 2020, the Queen personally oversaw the creation of her official ensemble. She requested reams of velvet be dyed a particular shade of sky blue, which she teamed with a floral raincoat she had styled out of waxed fabric usually used for tablecloths. “I’ve never considered what I do to be artistic, but yeah, I guess I get that part of my personality from my grandmother,” Nikolai says.
As for his advice for spring racing and what he’s looking forward to trackside at Flemington, Nikolai is keen for a party, but its mostly the glamour.
When WISH words him up about the strict dress codes and standards for the race that stops a nation, his face lights up. “That is so cool; I’m so used to that, rules and the like,” he laughs.
“I really can’t wait to get there and experience it all. Everyone I speak to about it is either jealous or wanting me to bring them along,” he says while checking his class schedule to see if he can swing a few more days off to enjoy the whole carnival.
“My dad lived here in the 1980s too but that was in Wagga and worked on a farm, so his experience is really different from mine.”
This story appears in the November issue of WISH Magazine, out now.
